That penultimate point is a stretch, since there are competing search engines, news sites, and Wikipedia, but I needed some dramatic emphasis, and quickly realized that my list wasn't looking long enough. OK, so it's a short list maybe, but it is pretty much everything basic for what a newbie would need online.

It still astounds me really that pretty much everything they do is free, but maybe that's why it's so successful. Google's making money behind the scenes, tons of it.